As the tea party came to an end, the reverend himself showed me out, while Ruth took the tray back to the kitchen. At the door he put his hand upon my back. He said nothing of any consequence as he did so, just that he hoped I would have a pleasant evening and he looked forward to seeing me on Sunday. I felt a strange, not altogether unpleasant, physical reaction to the touch of his hand. I wished that I had been able to stay longer, to talk more to him, and only him, even though that conversation might have been awkward. It was almost as if I had a need to confess.
But this evening I am much vexed by it. Being touched, even just in a familiar manner, by a man – it reminds me of Richard. I still miss him so very much. I know I should forget him, but how? He occupies my every waking thought.
Monday, 24th July
This morning I received another letter from Richard, written in haste. He has heard of a position at a school in St Albans, and suggests I might consider writing to the board. He asks if I have received a character from the Hackney school yet, and that reminded me that I have not. I have written to them to ask.
My dear Harriet,
I hope this letter finds you well. Your presence here is very much missed. A new mistress has been appointed to take the girls’ room at the school, although we both feel sure she could not possibly undertake the task as well as you. I heard very recently of a situation at a school at St Albans. Mr Edwards is acquainted with a member of the board there, and he asks whether you might consider leaving your home once more for a teaching position? If you are amenable, please reply quickly, or perhaps write to Mr Edwards directly, if you prefer. He is happy to write you a character but you will need at least one other. Maria sends her very best regards, and I remain, affectionately,
your
Richard Field
Even if the job in St Albans is unsuited, I will need a character for my next employment, and so the sooner they send it, the better.
In the afternoon I walked to the school and met Frances just as she was finishing lessons. She dismissed her two pupil teachers and I helped tidy up the girls’ room with her, although we could not talk freely for Mr Campling was in the room adjacent, separated from us only by a wooden wall. We could hear him admonishing some poor boy for having mud upon his shoes; the unfortunate recipient of his ire was set to work sweeping the floor of the schoolroom on his hands and knees.
I told Frances of Richard’s letter, and asked her for her opinion. She was a little cool in her initial response, but then she softened and said she thinks I should be very capable at any school that would have me, and offered to have me take some lessons with her girls if I should wish to; helping Clara with the Sunday School is all very well, but she feels I am missing what she calls ‘proper teaching’. She thinks it will help me get up the nerve to write to Mr Edwards. I told her I should be happy to, as I have heard many in the town say what an excellent teacher Miss Williams is, and that, if these reports are even half true, her girls should be delightfully mannered and well behaved.
She said she would miss me, were I to go.
I felt quite sad at the thought, for I realised she is a true friend, to think so much of me after only such a very short time. I told her I was glad Clara had introduced us, and that I hoped if I were to leave town once again that we should write to each other regularly and maintain our friendship thus. She said she would write to me every week, and smiled and held me tightly by the hand for a moment.
When the room was quite clean and ready for the next day’s lessons, we walked back to the Beezleys’ and I took tea with her. She asked me about Richard and Maria, and whether I felt better about their marriage now that it has taken place. I replied that I had honestly given it less thought since then, and that without doubt her kindnesses to me had lessened the sting of it. She said she thought that Richard must be a fool to have chosen another over me, and that perhaps, in common with so many other men, he ‘desired a woman who would simply knit and sew, and run the household and bear him children without giving any further thought to her own life and intellect’. Those were her precise words. I was rather shocked by them; not for the vehemence with which she said them, but rather because in that moment I realised that what she said was absolutely true. As dear a friend as Maria is to me, she is every inch the perfect wife in waiting; she taught at the school only whilst waiting for a husband, not because she particularly enjoyed it, or because she wanted to educate her charges. Richard must have seen that, her readiness to be a wife, and perhaps that is what he fell in love with after all. He would never have married me, because he could tell that such a connection would stifle me – and how foolish I have been, for I thought in all honesty that I would love to be stifled in just such a way! But Frances has shown me that such a thing would be truly dreadful, similar perhaps to an early death … although not, I think, with Richard. If I could have been the one to marry Richard, he would not stifle me thus. It’s not he who has done it, it is something Maria will do to herself. She will put herself into a casket marked ‘dutiful wife’ and she will close the lid.
Friday, 28th July
This morning I received a letter from the board at the Hackney school, with an enclosure: the testimonial they had promised to send, two full months ago! And now I rather wish they had not bothered to send it at all, for it is really rather disappointing: they say that I am diligent and punctual, and that the standard of the lessons was satisfactory, but at the conclusion they say ‘there is a great want of humility and energy’ about me. I do not understand what on earth they can mean by it! The more I think about it, the more I tie myself in knots about their opinion. Surely Richard has not sanctioned such a description of me? Or perhaps he has written it himself, and had Mr Edwards copy it; perhaps he does not want me to find another situation?
In the end my confusion overcame my profound shame at being described thus, and I showed the letter to Frances. She pointed out all the encouraging things they had said, including that my pupils had responded well to my tuition and great improvements had been seen in their learning and in their behaviour. She said that schools do not like testimonials that have not a critical word to say about their subjects, that they consider such letters to be forged.
Nevertheless, the matter continued to trouble me greatly, and after the prayer meeting this evening I asked the reverend about it. He was most reassuring, and I felt better for having spoken to him.
Monday, 31st July
Last week I was very busy helping at the school, and I find it has lifted my spirits very well indeed. I worked for first one day, and then another, and then two together, and then, once, three days together, and I stayed the night with Frances to save me the trouble of walking back home only to return early the following day. I returned home only this morning to change my dress, and, there was all manner of trouble. My mother was tight-lipped and silent; Mary Ann went for me like a cat after a bird, pouncing on me the moment I stepped through the door. What meant I by it, treating their home like a common lodging house, visiting when the mood took me? Why should I work at the school for no reward, instead of looking for a position which would earn money for the benefit of my family? I was not a child any longer, I was a grown woman, and if I was not to find a husband then my role was to earn a living and support my mother into her old age, she who had given her life over to the care of her family. So it went, on and on. She barely paused for breath.
To my shame, I answered her back. I told her she was a wizened old maid who had not the intelligence nor the skill to find employment herself; if anyone was living off our mother’s charity, it was she, not I.
She slapped my face, hard, for my insolence. She reminded me that she was my elder sister and I should show her respect.
I told her (but quietly, for my cheek stung) that respect had to be earned, and yelling at me like a barrow woman did not inspire me to respect her.
All the fire had gone out of her, expelled in that physical expression of violence. Our mother had watched th
e whole thing without any intervention. Perhaps she felt that we needed to fight every once in a while to keep us both sane. After we had finished, she looked from one of us to the other and said, ‘There now. All’s been said. Mary, make tea. Harriet, clear the table. We shall say no more about it.’
I brooded on the argument and thought that perhaps at the heart of it lay jealousy, that Mary Ann was jealous of my freedom and of my confidence. Perhaps I did torment her a little, with my free life, when she had little choice but to stay here and tend to the house as mother grew older and less able. I felt sorry for her, and then worried that my pity was a sign of my own pride.
Later, however, I felt stronger and angrier and I wanted to leave, there and then. My anger was cold and hard like a stone in my chest, whilst Mary Ann’s own fury had burnt itself out. I cleared the plates after our dinner and washed them, and then announced that I was going to Miss Williams’s house, because I had promised to help with the younger girls again on the following day.
Neither of them said a word. I took the schoolbooks and this journal – Lord knows I shall not leave it for Mary Ann to find again – and walked across the fields to the town.
But Frances was not alone; I heard voices, and laughter, as I climbed the wooden staircase that led to her door. I hesitated before knocking, thinking perhaps she would not wish to be disturbed. But then I thought of returning home to Farwig, and I knocked.
Frances opened the door and any concerns I had had disappeared immediately, for she smiled broadly at the sight of me and took my hand to draw me inside, saying, ‘Harriet! What a lovely surprise, do come in.’
Clara was there, and also her brother, for she had been about to depart and he had come to see her safely home. For all his walking me back across the fields, I confess I had not paid him much attention until this evening. As a youth he had been gangly and awkward, following me around the town and watching me from the doorway of his father’s shop; Mary Ann had laughed, once, and said he was sweet on me, and made fun of the whole show, but I do not think he was. I always thought he was just in need of a friend, and for some reason he had fixed upon me. But now he is a grown man, and still he is an odd, quiet sort of fellow: tall and wellbuilt, with trimmed whiskers and fine features. He is now a bootmaker and works with his father, and yet despite the manual labour he has beautiful hands. Clara remarked upon this to Frances while I was there with them, and we all had to inspect Thomas’s hands, much to his embarrassment. Perhaps it was having his hands offered to me to hold and inspect that made me look at him afresh. He seems very gentle. He is of my age and yet so quiet that people in the town say he is a little slow-witted. I have never thought this to be true. Frances told me after they had left that Thomas reads music well enough but he never learned his letters properly at school and so he has difficulties still with reading and writing. He hides it well enough and his family take care of him.
It’s not right to feel sorry for people who don’t feel sorry for themselves, and I do not know what led me to write of him, for the Lord knows there is nothing I can do or need to do to help him. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps just that I thought it was a kind thing for him to do, to come along to a meeting of women that must surely have been dull for him, purely so that his sister would not need to walk the hundred yards or less back to their house alone.
They left perhaps a half-hour after my arrival, and soon after that Frances and I got ready for bed, for the fire had burned low and the night had turned cold. We lay there in bed talking for some time. I told her of the argument with my sister, and how I thought perhaps I had been too selfish. Frances replied that she could see fault on both sides, but for her part she was glad that I had come.
She said her heart sang when I was there with her, and she reached for my hand under the covers and held it.
I had no reply for this, for it sounded like something a lover might say. I wanted to reply with something kind, and meaningful, for it was completely true that I loved her dearly. But I realised – perhaps then, for the very first time, that Frances loved me in a different way. Not as a friend, but as a lover. As I had loved Richard. The thought was a startling one, because how could such a thing be? But the more I considered it, the more I understood that it might be true. And, while I thought of what to say, and how to say it, Frances’s breathing deepened, and she was asleep, her hand still holding mine.
Wednesday, 2nd August
Maria is expecting a child.
I heard the news not from Richard, but from Maria herself; her first letter to me since I left London.
My dearest Harriet,
I write to you now with the very happiest of news. Richard and I are to have a child in the autumn. I am full of nerves and anticipation, and, with the exception of a dreadful, crushing fatigue, I am quite well. The doctor says I am to rest as much as possible and dear Richard has been very attentive. Please do say you will visit us soon! We both feel your absence terribly, and I have so much to tell you. The school carries on much as it always has, although the girls miss you, and Miss Johnson begs me to send you her fondest regards. I beg you to write to me very soon with your news, and until then I remain,
Your loving friend always,
Maria
The letter I had been anticipating was really a very bland one, no doubt because she had shared it with him before she sent it. The big secret she had put me under oath to keep was now out, and our intimate truce broken. There. I am bitter, can you tell? My heart is sore with it, for that might have been me; her life might well have been my life, had I not been so very foolish, and run away.
I wrote back almost at once, more to get the matter over and done with than because of any eagerness on my part. He will read it, of course, and so my words were carefully chosen.
My dear Maria,
I have just received your latest; such exciting news! My warmest congratulations to you both. I am so glad to hear that Richard is taking good care of you. You must, indeed, rest as much as you can; for the coming months and years will no doubt prove to be exhausting ones!
All is well here, although I do miss you both and my girls dreadfully. I long to visit and I promise I shall do so very soon. Until then, my dear friend, remember my love and that I hold you dear in this heart of mine,
Your,
Harriet
I took it straight to the post before I could think or read it over, or change my mind. An odd sort of letter. Here we continue with this merry dance: when will it end?
I have been reading some Aristotle, and thinking much on the nature of friendship. I am the sort of person who has but a few very dear friends, and all the rest are what I would consider acquaintances. I find it difficult to trust, but, once that trust has been established, I would sooner die than betray a friend. So it was with Maria, and, for all that has passed between us, I love her as much as I always did. My love for her, and now also for Frances – philia – is stronger than the love I feel for Richard – eros, as Plato defines it – although the feelings I have for them are quite distinct. How odd that the English language has just one word to describe such different emotions!
The love of a true friend surpasses all earthly affections, otherwise how should we live?
Friday, 4th August
Spending time at the school has proved a welcome distraction this week. Frances has been teaching the older girls to debate, although quietly, when I am taking the younger ones for some recitation. They sit in the corner and take a topic for discussion, and another will take the opposing view, and by so doing, Frances says, they will learn the courage of their own conviction and how best to express themselves when they find themselves challenged, later in life. Clearly Mr Campling would not approve, and she knows it, which is why she chooses the girls carefully. It is not done in secret, for I have no doubt that if Mr Campling saw and was angry then Frances would have something to say in response. She quite rules the school, without Mr Campling even knowing. I love her for that!
; Meanwhile, the quieter girls are learning to speak up, and the bashful girls are finding their voice, and they are doing it all with Frances to guide them.
‘Do you not worry,’ I said to her, ‘that these girls will find themselves dissatisfied with the life they will undoubtedly have, because you have taught them to be bold?’
I said this just after having praised her for her efforts, so she knew I was not in disagreement with her methods, just questioning of the results of it. She smiled at me and said that some of them might go on to great things, and she would not be the one to limit them. Plenty of others would try to do that, in the future, and she meant at least to give them the weapons with which to fight those injustices. What they chose to do with them was up to the girls.
Frances is the most excellent teacher I think I should ever know. She loves her girls, by which I mean she does not indulge them, but she disciplines them so well and praises them when they work hard, or try their best, that they want to improve and so work even harder for her. She knows them all as individuals, and loves them dearly, although she cannot tell them so except by giving them what they most need: the gift of an education. She defends them against Mr Campling’s more vigorous complaints, and if anyone should speak ill of any of them she becomes a veritable warrior in their defence. I declare that is exactly what she is: Frances Williams, Warrior for her Girls.
I have learned so much from her, not just about teaching, but about love.
Monday, 7th August
Mary Ann has driven me from the house once more with her scolds and unkindnesses. She could see I was in distress; when I would not tell her why, she told me to stop snivelling as there was laundry to be done. I helped her for a while but I soon became exhausted with the effort of it, and Mary Ann chided me over and over. It seemed that everything I did was wrong. At last she instructed me to go, that she would manage better without me.
The Murder of Harriet Monckton Page 34